Friedrich Grade

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colspan="2" style="text-align: center; font-size: 90%; border-bottom: 1px solid #aaa; line-height: 1.5em;" | File:Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Grade III.jpg
Birth date	29 March 1916(1916-03-29)
Place of birth	Büdelsdorf near Rendsburg, Province of Schleswig-Holstein, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire
Death date	13 October 2023 (aged 107)
Place of death	Bornheim, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Allegiance	Weimar Republic National Socialist Germany File:Flag of Germany (3-2 aspect ratio).png West Germany
Service/branch	Reichsmarine Kriegsmarine File:Deutsche Marine der Bundeswehr.png German Navy (Bundeswehr)
Years of service	1935 1935–1945 1958–1974
Rank	Officer Candidate Kapitänleutnant (Ing.) Kapitän zur See
Unit	U 8, U 96, U 183
Awards	Iron Cross German Cross in Gold
Other work	Export merchant

Friedrich "Fritz" Wilhelm Ernst Grade (29 March 1916 − 13 October 2023) was a German engineer (Ingenieuroffizier) and naval officer, finally Kapitän zur See (Captain at Sea) of the German Navy (Deutsche Marine) of the Bundeswehr. He enjoyed sports, smoking and driving until the end.

Life

File:The officers of the U 96 at the commissioning of the boat on 14 September 1940 in Kiel-Gaarden. Second from the right is Friedrich Grade.jpg

The officers of the U 96 at the commissioning of the boat on 14 September 1940 in Kiel-Gaarden. Second from the right is Friedrich Grade.

Grade grew up in Rendsburg, Varel as well as Oldenburg and got his driving license in 1934 and the driving test was a gift from his parents for passing his high school diploma (Abitur). Joining the Reichsmarine on 5 April 1935 (Crew 1935) as an Offiziersanwärter (Officer Candidate), Grade served aboard the cruiser "Emden", a training ship, as an engineering cadet, Kadett (Ing.), until 1936. The Reichsmarine had become the Kriegsmarine on 1 June 1935. He was then sent to engineering school, became Fähnrich (Ing.) and Oberfähnrich (Ing.), and volunteered for the U-Boot-Waffe. He served as Obersteuermann (chief helmsman) and Leutnant (Ing.) on U 8 under commandant Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock. In 1940, he was promoted to 1st Lieutenant or Oberleutnant (Ing.). When Lehmann-Willenbrock took over the new U 96 in late summer 1940, he asked for Grade as his chief engineer (Leitender Ingenieur; LI).

Lothar-Günther Buchheim joined U-96 for one patrol [Note: 7th Patrol] as a war correspondent. This resulted in the international best-selling novel of submarine warfare Das Boot (The Boat), the short story Die Eichenlaubfahrt (The Oak-Leaves Patrol) and a three-part text-and-photo chronicle U-bootkrieg (U-Boat War), U-Bootfahrer (U-Boat-Men) and Zu Tode Gesiegt (Victoried to Death). Buchheim was posted aboard as an official artist to provide impressions of the German Navy in action for propaganda purposes Over 5,000 of his photos survived the war, and 205 of these form the epic photo-essay U-Boat War. All the photographs in U-Boat War were taken by Buchheim with the exception of a few taken by U-96 engineering officer Fritz Grade.

Grade took part in seven of the eleven patrols (Feindfahrten) of U 96, the first beginning on 4 December 1940 and the seventh ending on 6 December 1941 (215 days at sea). He was transferred to the new U 183 (one of the Monsun boats that patrolled in the Far East) in early spring 1942 and took part in two patrols under Heinrich Schäfer until 13 May 1943 (200 days at sea). At the end of 1942, he had been promoted to Kapitänleutnant (Ing.). He then trained U-boat crews as a technical instructor for the submarine training flotilla until the end of the war.

In April 1942, he was assigned as “LI” to the submarine U 183 – the larger Type IX C boat. On the first patrol with this boat, his eighth in total, tensions arose with the commandant. After 75 years, Friedrich Grade remembers in an exclusive interview: “The new commander, Lieutenant Commander Heinrich Schäfer, did not have the qualities of Lehmann-Willenbrock. I didn't get along with him personally; we didn't get along well. The other officers also did not agree with the way he was handling the boat.” There was a Navy personnel office in Kiel specifically for such cases. Because Friedrich Grade no longer wanted to sail under the command of the commandant of U 183, he switched to another submarine during this boat's second patrol on the high seas and, upon his return, was ordered to Pillau near Königsberg as a technical instructor, where he remained until the end of the war. Meanwhile, the commandant of U 183, Schäfer, who was born in Bremerhaven, fell seriously ill overseas and died. The boat was torpedoed by a US submarine two weeks before the end of the war; only a single crew member survived.

After the war and his captivity (until 1948), he worked in his father-in-law's shipping company in Eckernförde. In 1951, he retrained as a technical export clerk in Remscheid. In 1958, he was accepted into the newly formed German Navy as a Korvettenkapitän to lead the technical development of new submarines in the Ministry of Defense in Bonn, with his family relocating there. In 1970, shortly before his retirement, he worked on the revision of Lothar-Günther Buchheim's novel Das Boot. When he retired in 1974, he held the rank of Captain at Sea (Ing.).

In Wolfgang Petersen's film Das Boot (1981) with six Oscar nominations, Leitender Ingenieur Friedrich "Fritz" Grade was portrayed by Klaus Wennemann (1940–2000). In 2017, Grade presented the author Gerrit Reichert with his previously unknown diaries, which he had secretly recorded on board U96. Knowing full well that they are in good hands with Reichert. The journalist received the recordings with books for posterity and with them the story of the last U 96 veteran.

Widower Friedrich Grade spent his last years in a retirement home (Seniorenwohnstift Beethoven) in Bornheim near the Rhein north of Bonn. Even in the retirement home, the veteran was considered the contact point for anything that was defective well into his old age – he ran a "repair cafe", so to speak. Even during the Corona pandemic, he is said to have developed a game for his roommates that was guaranteed to be infection-free to combat the boredom of quarantine: they played “sink ships” over the house telephones. In the years there, he was also co-organizer of the annual sports festival.

He was the oldest member of the Marine Officers' Association (Marine-Offizier-Vereinigung; MOV) and Germany's oldest ADAC member. The Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club (lit. 'General German Automobile Club') is Europe's largest automobile association.

Death

Kapitän zur See a. D. Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Grade died on 13 October 2023. Condolences poured in from all over the world.

Familie

Grade married in 1941 in Eckernförde, where he later would lived for ten years, and had two children who were born during World War II. He had as of 2023 nine grandchildren and 30 great-grandchildren.

Awards and decorations

• Wehrmacht Long Service Award (Wehrmacht-Dienstauszeichnung), 4th Class
• Iron Cross (1939), 2nd and 1st Class
• U-boat War Badge 1939 (U-Boot-Kriegsabzeichen)
• German Cross in Gold on 19 November 1943 as Kapitänleutnant (Ing.) and Leitender Ingenieur on U 183/2. Unterseebootsflottille

Gallery

• Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Grade V.jpg
• Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Grade IX.jpg
• Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Grade IV.jpg
• Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Grade auf U 96.jpg
• An Bord von U 96 spricht Friedrich Grade (Mitte) vor 80 Jahren mit Kameraden. Das Boot ist gesunken, muss vor Gibraltar wieder an die Wasseroberfläche gebracht werden. Nur dank seiner Ideen klappt das.png
• Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Grade, here as Kapitänleutnant (Ing.).jpg
• Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Grade in 2017.jpg
• Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Grade VI.jpg
• Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Grade VII.jpg
• Kapitän zur See a.D. Friedrich Grade, in Bornheim, 2022.jpg
• Friedrich Grade, Ursula Lawitzka, Aiga Gräfin von Kesselstatt, Lilo Apfeld and Gert Dickopp, July 2022.jpg
• Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Grade VIII.jpg